Mass Effect Snippets
by Andoriol
Summary: Little glimpses into the Mass Effect world. Mostly Tali/Shepard. Redone slightly with less suck
1. Chapter The First

**A.N.) – **I moved the original set to the second chapter, since I like these a lot better. It's a personal preference to start off with as little suck as possible.

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**1). **Every now and then, Shepard would feel inadequate when compared to others on his team. He wasn't as powerful a biotic as Jack, he wasn't half as good with his tech as Tali, he couldn't work with technology in the same league as Mordin, wasn't as stealthy as Thane, wasn't as tough as Grunt… he was always second place behind his specialists… and as a whole, outclassed them all.

**2). **Quarians couldn't kiss, and like the human culture of the Eskimos, developed a substitute. A Quarian would touch a finger to the others metal voicebox for a quick peck, or gently touch their faceplates together for a more intimate 'kiss'.

**3). **Ashley Williams thought of herself as a good Christian, she didn't force it down people's throats, she tried to be kind to everyone she met, believed in God and only God, so on and so forth.  
But after seeing Shepard in combat, surrounded by a halo of blazing blue light, gun in one hand, the other covered in an ominous orange glow… he'd been the _definition _of righteous fury. He manipulated the very fabric of space with his thoughts, technology bent to his will, he survived things that should've by all rights killed him several times over… she'd actually thought he might be the left hand of God for a while there…  
Then he'd come back from the dead, and she knew, just _knew_, that this wasn't a normal person.  
By almost anyone's definition, Shepard was a God.

**4). **When Tali recognized him that first time, knew it was him through the armor, through the reconstruction, through the sealed helmet, it was the most wonderful thing that'd happened to him since he'd waken up in the Cerberus lab.

**5). **As poised as he was in battle, Shepard danced like an epileptic chicken. When Tali commented on this, he'd simply said, 'At least you're graceful enough for the two of us.'

**6). **The most wonderful sound Shepard had ever heard was the soft *clink* his helmet made when he touched it to Tali's.

**7). **Shepard tried to learn the basics of every specialty his squad members had. He learned how to duplicate Samara's Reave on a certain level, weakly imitate Miranda's Slam, channel his biotic bleed-off into his bullets to create Warp Ammo much like Jack did, carried a number of incendiary grenades much like Zaeed, hell, he'd long ago learned to use a sniper rifle from Garrus and while he couldn't put up a barrier as strong as Jacob's, he _could _put one up.  
But the operative word in that first sentence was tried.  
Despite his best efforts, he never learned how to hack an active AI like Tali or later Legion could, never imitated Liara's singularity, operating a drone in combat was beyond his technical skills, he just wasn't a 'perfect' Krogan, Mordin would always be the better scientist.  
The only one that really bugged him though, was that he could never figure out how the _hell_ Thane did that disappearing trick of his.

**8). **Sometimes, Shepard missed his old scars, those lines in his skin had been a reminder of what he'd lost, of lessons learned and sacrifices made…  
And now they'd all been replaced by glowing reminders of how far from humanity he'd fallen.

**9). **When Samara had described her daughter's preferred prey, Shepard had immediately escorted Tali back to the Normandy and, despite her protests, grounded her.

**10). **In spite of herself, when Za'eed asked what would keep him from killing Shepard in his sleep, Jack's first thought had been '_Me _bitch.'

**11).** Shepard found Legion to be amusing, if a little creepy due to their habit of attempting to mimic organic nonverbal language, Tali… not so much.

**12). **"You did the right thing Jack."  
"Maybe. This room was my whole childhood, give me a minute to look around."  
"Take all the time you need."  
Shepard cut the external speakers on his suit with a thought and opened a tight-beam communication as he trailed after the biotic convict.  
"Miranda. This facility dies with Jack. Only Jack."  
Out of the corner of his eye, Shepard saw Miranda nod and usher Tali out of the small cell as well.  
Letting Aresh go was symbolic, it represented Jack letting her traumatic childhood go and the beginnings of moving past it. Jack _had _to let him go in order to start healing, Shepard didn't.

**13). **An Asari's body temp was higher than a human's, whereas a Quarian's was lower. Asari enjoyed sharing body heat as a general rule, Quarians enjoyed being snuggled up to warmer entities as an escape from being constantly cool in their environmental suits or from ships with faulty environmental controls. Shepard learned these things first hand.

**14). **Krogan skulls were just short of bulletproof and their brains were actually settled closer to their 'necks' than where most species expected the brain to be. Unless you got them head on with high caliber rounds or from the side and into the eyes, shooting a Krogan in the head was effectively useless. Shepard was mildly surprised that he had to point this out to Samara.

**15).** Despite Samara's insistence that Shepard went into the club alone and unarmed, despite the Commander effectively locking her on the ship, Tali still made sure that Shepard was safe. (She'd talked Thane into shadowing the Spectre for the night)

**16). **He hadn't saved the Council in some misguided attempt to get them specifically on humanity's side, he didn't save them out of some foolish attempt at being noble, Shepard saved them because if he didn't, humanity would've been on the receiving end of a smear campaign to end all smear campaigns. There wouldn't be any amount of PR that could've saved face if the Council died during Sovereign's attack.  
He'd also been under the impression that the Destiny Ascension would be contributing to the attack on Sovereign if it was saved.

**17). **Cerberus was a useful tool, a dangerous one, but a useful one in this situation.  
Tali got it, Garrus got it, hell, even naïve little Liara got that just fine (Wrex didn't really care), why couldn't Alenko?

**18). **Shepard always understood that his team had issues that needed to be taken care of, and while he would occasionally get emotionally involved in the mission (Jacob's and Zaeed's coming to mind) it was a rare occurrence as well as something that happened _during _the mission. Events during the mission would sometimes strike a chord in the Commander, would tug at his heartstrings, and his heart would pour into it. Mid-way through, it would stop being simply the teammates mission, and become a joint mission between them.  
All except Tali's.  
He was 'emotionally invested' in that one going in.

**19). **For all her shyness and introspective nature, Shepard wasn't sure whether or not he was surprised at how wild Tali could be in bed.

**20). **Despite how well the two of them got along most of the time, Shepard and Tali had a disagreement they never resolved on how to modify a shielding system. It had nothing to do with biotics, they both understood that his biotics brought in a fundamental difference in shielding systems. He thought that a shielding system should be a network of Eezo cores and capacitors in an interconnected web with considerable redundancy. _She _thought a shielding system should be several large Eezo cores with fewer, larger batteries and as much redundancy as possible. Seeing as neither of them got hurt much, no one could figure out who was actually right.

**21). **Shepard had never really been jealous before. When the girl he'd thought about asking out on Mindior had been asked out by someone else, he'd been sad, but not really jealous. When he'd been unable to match his specialists in their respective fields, he'd just accepted it without qualms, he couldn't match them in their specialty, but he wasn't that far behind and he knew a considerably greater number of tricks. The closest thing to jealousy he'd felt had been when other men had expressed interest in Liara, he'd felt a greater than usual desire to crush their skulls, but even then he'd classify it more as a protective feeling than a jealous one.  
For all his skill and capability, the first human Spectre didn't really know how to handle jealousy.  
It was only later, after the assault on the Collector base, that Shepard would admit to Tali that more than one male Quarian had gotten _very _lucky before and after her trial.

**22). **Joker had always known that the Commander had a pair of either chrome-plated steel or solid eezo, but it'd been out and out confirmed when he'd asked Miranda flat out in the mess hall:  
"Okay, honestly, how the hell do you get that thing on? Do you vacuum seal it against your skin or something?"

**23). **In one time and place, Jane Shepard was warned not to… 'ingest'. In another, the exact same warning was given to Tali'Zorah.  
The Quarian had been quick to remind the Professor that she had a shotgun.

**24). **Jack hated everyone, with three exceptions.  
One was Miranda. She didn't just hate Miranda, she _**loathed **_the Cerberus bitch on multiple levels. Oh, she'd work with the bitch when told to, but she couldn't stand that prim-and-proper Cerberus slut.  
The second one was Shepard, that man could seem like a total pussy one second and then scare the shit out of Krogan the next. He actually gave a shit about her and there wasn't a thing she could do to scare him off. Of course she didn't hate him, she alternated between lusting after him, loathing him, and just possibly loving him more than was healthy in her situation (which was to say, any at all). So no, she didn't hate Shepard.  
The only other person she didn't hate on the entire damn ship, had to be that little Quarian bitch hardly half a deck above her. She _wanted _to hate the bitch, 'cause the way she saw it, the Quarian was the only thing standing between her and some quality time with Shepard. But the bitch was so damned _nice_ and _sincere_ and just as willing to blast Cerberus out the airlock. None of that would keep Jack from hating her though, just make her think the bitch was another pussy.  
Thing was, the Quarian bitch was about as much a pussy as Shepard. Jack had gone up there once while the Commander was on a mission with Vakarian and Thane to try and scare the little bitch away from Shepard. Girl had told Jack to her face: 'It's Shepard's decision who he wants to care for, not mine. If you have a problem with it, you can take it up with him, or we can see how useful your biotics are when your amp's been hacked, it's your choice.'  
Jack didn't like it, but _damn_, she could respect that.

**25). **Mordin had mentioned off-handedly that there were surprisingly few 'instructional videos' for Human-Quarian relations, Shepard hadn't gotten it right away, but he'd figured it out himself. Due to various environmental and cultural factors, there were few instances of recorded 'mating' and 'courtship' between the species 'au natural'.  
Which basically meant there wasn't a whole lot of porn about it.  
It'd been amusing, but that hadn't been the surprising part.  
The surprising part had been when Tali had suggested (buried deep within one of her nervous ramblings) that they could 'Try and provide more interesting educational material than the ones they'd been forced to use since there were so few of them available to the Flotilla and Quarians were always supposed to think of the Flotilla first.'  
Shepard loved that woman, _so _much.

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**A.N.) - **Alright, hopefully the issues with the documents/chapters has been fixed and you're finally seeing this thing, sheesh.


	2. Chapter The Second

**A.N.) - **This is just something to try and get the creative juices flowing again. Between college starting back up, Mass Effect 2 coming out, and getting elected as vice-president of a club at the college, I'm kinda busy. I've only recently gotten the time to start writing again and, sadly, I haven't been able to just truck along with Naruto: Lord of Konoha, _it's not dead_, I'm having issues writing it at the level I'd like, but it's not dead.

**

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**1). **His right shoulder aches all the time anymore, rolling or popping it helps and it's not that hard to ignore, but Shepard can't really make it go away. He knows _why _it hurts though. It's the side he landed on after the Collectors blew up his ship.

**2).** Anymore, Shepard's hands are far more sensitive than normal, the extensive reconstruction of his nervous system was one thing, the enhancements to the nerves in his forearms are there to increase his connection to his omni-tool and allow him to operate any holographic tech were another. It had the unintended side effect of making his hands overly sensitive, to the point that casual touch was impossible.

**3).** There wasn't much that scared Miranda, she could, would, and _had_ stood her ground against a charging Krogan as she mustered up the concentration to biotically toss it across the room. But the thought of being on the other end of Shepard's gun terrified her.

**4). **Tali was worried that Shepard would be turned off by how different she was from humans.

Shepard was worried that Tali would be turned off by how similar he was to a Geth.

**5).** Grunt was beyond proud of his battlemaster. The best word he could use was ecstatic. He'd meant it when he'd told the Shaman that there was no better battlemaster than Shepard.

Shepard saw mercenaries, they always died. He often gave them a chance to give up, but still.

A pack of Varen attacked them once while they were saving a wounded Quarian, Shepard and Grunt held them off while their Salarian and Quarian fixed up the other one. The Varen died in droves, Shepard even punched one of the things skulls in when it got too close to his Quarian.

Grunt's favorite part about his battlemaster had to be his devotion to his Krahnt, like the one time a particularly stupid Krogan had almost let his pet Varen bite Shepard's Quarian, Grunt's battlemaster had threatened to rip out the Krogan's left liver and beat his own Varen to death with it if he didn't reign the thing in.

Then he'd gone and actually _did _it, it'd been _hilarious_. Pulling apart a Salarian's head thingy's was one thing, seeing an insolent Krogan have his liver ripped out by a human and then said human beating the Krogan's Varen to death with it? That was priceless.

The kicker had come when the Krogan had tried to get angry with him, Shepard just headbutted the idiot, and when questioned, said he'd warned the whining bitch about messing with his Krahnt.

You didn't get a better battlemaster than that.

**6).** Shepard didn't know his pupils glowed red in the dark until he saw their reflection in Tali's eyes.

**7).** While dextro-amino based things could either pass through a human's system or send them into analeptic shock, in Shepard's case it was the former. The Commander wasn't the only one happy to discover this.

**8).** When Tali asked, Shepard didn't lie. He _had _considered Miranda and Jack, even briefly fantasizing about getting them together with him. But that had been little more than passing fantasy. When pressed about Liara, he'd told her that while he'd given serious consideration to trying to get them both, he'd pick her over Liara if it came down to it… though it did completely ruin his thought experiment on whether an Asari could meld with more than one person at once.

**9).** Tali hadn't known what to say when Shepard had given her the first right-off-the-production-line omni-tool she'd ever had. She'd been speechless when he'd given their first Savant omni-tool to _her_ instead of taking it for himself (despite his protestations that she was the better tech and would get more mileage out of it). When he'd handed her not only a Savant X, but a Colossus IX suit built specifically for Quarians, it'd practically blown her mind. But when he'd given her his heart, she'd known exactly what to do.

**10). **There wasn't a single person on the Normandy that didn't know the story of Shepard headbutting a Krogan just to make a point.

**11). **In a world of confusion and disassociation, where nothing was the same, Shepard latched tightly onto what _was_, Joker, Garrus, Tali, they were all Shepard had left of what he knew. For the second time in Shepard's life, his world had been turned upside down, his home, his family, his friends, all gone in an instant... and he was still here. At least he hadn't lost _everything_.

**12).** Sometimes, Shepard forgot how strong he really was, especially after the extra cybernetic modifications. He'd stopped using glass cups only a week after his muscular modification settled in.

Not because he couldn't hold them without breaking them, but because of how _little_ it took for him to break them..

**13). **Even though he'd been put off by Mordin's 'advice' at first, Shepard snuck back into the lab during the graveyard shift to check in with the doctor about several things.

**14). **Years of service and combat had pitted and scarred much of the Commander's skin which the Spectre, despite Shepard's front of overwhelming confidence, was more than a little self conscious about. It was the subtle, unacknowledged reason that his armor stayed on as much as it did.

**15).** Once the news of Shepard's death and subsequent resurrection began to sneak out, several cults actually sprung up, one believed that Shepard was the Second Coming, another thought he was divinely blessed to represent humanity, the largest (spanning several species and a number of planets) believed that he was simply the god of war made flesh.

**16). **Synching up suit environments was the most intimate thing a Quarian could do. They got sick afterwards to varying degrees. It was a sign of readiness for intimacy. A Quarian's 'getting sick' in this case was really an allergic reaction as their immune systems adapted to a foreign entity. Shepard was delighted to discover that as long as the surroundings were 'decontaminated' a Quarian's immune system could adapt to another entity.

**17).** Two weeks after the Suicide Mission, Shepard installed a set of auto-decontamination systems into his room and shower, much like those in a standard airlock or aboard certain ships in the Flotilla. Tali was beyond delighted.

**18).** After they'd left Tuchunka, Jack could barely stop laughing. Shepard had helped Grunt kill the Thresher Maw during the Krogan's rite, and practically every _other _Krogan in the place was talking about it. After about the tenth time he heard this, the Commander had muttered, 'Wasn't the first time either assholes.' The Krogan overheard him and very vocally doubted that he'd done that, Shepard, in the spirit of the Krogan, had headbutted the offending idiot and pointed out that he'd survived an entire Thresher Maw _nest_, it was kinda what he was famous for.

The look on the Krogan's face was priceless.

**19).** "Ah, yes Commander?"

"Ah, yes… well," Shepard coughed awkwardly, "Do you have a minute to talk?"

"Certainly Commander. Can already guess what you want to talk about."

"I sorta doubt that."

"You're uncomfortable. The only time you've been uncomfortable before was when discussing relationship with Miss Zoraya. Despite protestations, you are the type to read through the material I sent before asking questions. Currently the only one on the ship to ask about Quarians aside from Miss Zoraya. As asking her would be… uncomfortable at best. Happy to answer any questions you might have, Commander."

Shepard rubbed his right shoulder, "Man I hate it when you do that…" he coughed awkwardly, "Okay… this, is going to probably sound stupid, but…" Shepard winced, "Well, there's no good way to ask this, but… with all my cybernetic enhancements, is there a chance I might hurt her if I get too… rowdy?"

Mordin smiled as gently as he could at the human, "Shouldn't worry. Quarian bone structure different from Humans in many ways. More structurally sound than a Humans as well. Might cause some bruising if you get… *ahem* rowdy, but no worries about breaking bones or such."

"Oh… good-"

"Another thing. Just remembered, never gave you this," a datapad was snatched out of the mess and handed to Shepard, "List of possible uses for biotics, know you've had them for a while but might find an idea you didn't have before."

"Okay, now you're just enjoying this way too much."

**20). **"So, Shepard, who'd win in a fight, you or the Drell?"

"Me. Thane's good, but there'd have to be extenuating circumstances for him to beat me."

"What about you and the Turian?"

"Me, Garrus isn't too good when someone tosses a good biotic throw in his face."

"Legion?"

"… Grunt, Legion is a single platform, I've destroyed over a _thousand _of them."

"Right, bad one…. What about the Salarian?"

"Me. As smart as he is, I have more armor, better shields, bigger guns, and biotics, I'd snap the good Doctor in half."

"The Quarian?"

"Tali."

"How abo- Wait… what?"

"… I said Tali. What's the big deal?"

"… how would the Quarian beat _you _in a fight?"

"I wouldn't fight."

"…"

"…"

"…"

"Say a word about it Grunt and we'll find out exactly how fast you can regen, kay?"

"Right."

**21). **When Kaiden saw Shepard in action for the first time in two years, it was a jarring experience. The same brutal efficiency, the same synergy of biotics, tech, and bullets, the same overpowering offense from behind an impenetrable wall of shields and armor.

But Kaidan had arrived in time to see Shepard lift a Collector off the ground with a hand, toss it onto its back, and crush it's chest cavity under his boot in a single fluid motion. A chest cavity that shrugged off a thousand Newton throw at point blank range.

This was the Commander, but it wasn't, and it shook Alenko to his core

**22). **Tali had always known that Shepard was a biotic, but it'd never really struck her till sparks played between their hands.

**23). **It was a month before Jack accepted that Shepard meant it when he said that he hadn't meant to lead her along, that he'd just wanted to be her friend, that he'd never really wanted to get into her pants. It was another month before she actually forgave him.

**24). **Years later, as she lay snuggled up against Shepard's chest with a sleeping Liara pressed up against her back, Tali realized that he'd intentionally piqued her curiosity by commenting on the possibility of an Asari melding with two individuals at once, that he'd expected it to gnaw at her till she was at least willing to give it a try just to find out. If it hadn't been as good as it was, she'd probably been a whole lot angrier with him.

**25). **The day they got into dock after dealing with the Collectors, Shepard repainted the Normandy and finally got rid of the Cerberus symbol plastered everywhere on the ship.

**26). **Shepard insisted on going by his last name, because it was all he had left of Mindoir.

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**A.N.) - **Meh, this wasn't supposed to be good or bad, just practice at writing contained thoughts and trying to get back into the fanfic mood enough to get back to writing Naruto: Lord of Konoha (Which will herefor be refferred to as N:LoK because I'm getting a headache and I'm lazy). I'm probably going to do another one of these before I'm really in a fanfic mood, but it might be a bit, I'm taking more classes and as I said in the foreword, I'm suddenly vice-president of a club, so I'm still adjusting to my new responsibilities. All in all though, I'm getting used to this and should have another chapter for N:LoK up sometime next month.


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